Plus, a new Lithuanian restaurant comes to Alameda, and a new project from former Borgo

Last summer, Kyle Itani, chef and co-owner of the then-nearly-brand-new Uptown Oakland restaurant Hopscotch (1915 San Pablo Ave.), was talking to a friend about Oakland's lack of late-night dining options when he hit upon an ingenious idea. What if, after Hopscotch finished dinner service at 11 p.m. on Friday nights, the restaurant stayed open? And what if, instead of his regular upscale Cal-cuisine menu, he served ramen, which Itani had always thought was the perfect one-dish meal  just the thing to eat at the end of a long night of drinking?

So was born Yonsei Ramen Shop, which Itani started running as a weekly pop-up inside his own restaurant last October. For three or four hours every Friday night, he would convert Hopscotch into a ramen shop  the kind of bare-bones, down-and-dirty shop you might stumble upon in some Tokyo alleyway.

This month, after a summer-long hiatus, Itani has re-launched Yonsei with a few minor changes: Now, the pop-up's start time has been pushed up an hour to 10 p.m. Itani and his staff will sling noodles until they sell out, usually sometime between 1 and 2 a.m. Meanwhile, instead of hosting the ramen shop in Hopscotch's main dining room, Itani has moved the operation two doors down to a recently acquired annex that the restaurant eventually plans to use for banquets.

When I swung by to check out Yonsei's season debut earlier this month, I initially walked right past the dimly lit annex, marked only by a hand-painted sign propped on the ground: "RAMEN." The atmosphere and decor inside could not have been more casual  bare, unpainted patches on the walls; a makeshift "bar" with a dropcloth draped over it; and well-worn wooden tables that looked like they'd been swiped out of someone's garage.

Sure, there was a certain artificiality to the divey-ness of the space  Hopscotch is, after all, a nice restaurant, and each carefully crafted cocktail on the drinks menu still costs nine or ten bucks. Besides, Itani said the haphazardness was at least partly a temporary thing: He does plan to paint the walls, buy new tables, and install a real bar counter.

But whatever the intent, at least for this one evening, I bought into the vibe whole hog. As midnight drew near, the room was steaming hot, and over the sound system Eminem was spitting his one verse on "Forgot About Dre." Sipping water from a plastic cup emblazoned with the Pabst Blue Ribbon logo, I felt like I was back in college, hanging out in some classmate's partially finished basement. Except we would have been eating plain old instant noodles instead of Itani's ramen, which was legitimately great.

Sorry, I buried the lede: The ramen was great. The version I tried, listed on the menu as "Pork Ramen for Beauty and Health" ($9), had a shoyu (soy sauce-based) broth made with kombu (seaweed), dried shiitakes, tuna flakes, long-simmered pork bones, and just a hint of rice vinegar to lighten things up  "a perfect blend of earth, land, and sea," as Itani put it. The broth was clear and clean-tasting, perfect for hot weather; the noodles were springy and eminently slurpable. The basic bowl came topped with a scattering of scallions, a slice of luxuriously tender pork belly, and two water-chestnut gyoza (wontons, basically) that gave the dish a bit of a Chinese twist.

For $4, you can also buy an optional topping set, which included, among other delicacies, sweet corn, delicate shimeji mushrooms a beautiful shoyu-marinated soft-boiled egg, and some kind of spicy shredded dried pork. The egg alone makes it hard to pass up.

Both the broth and the toppings vary from week to week depending on the season and what Itani has on hand. For the two weeks since Yonsei started up again, he's served the same basic pork ramen, but this Friday it might be something different. The good thing about the once-a-week pop-up format is that there's freedom to experiment, which is why Itani follows several ramen shops in Japan on Instagram: "I like to see ... if there's anything crazy they're doing that we can try out here," he said.

Yonsei also always offers a vegetarian ramen option, as well as a selection of fun bar snacks: During our visit, Itani was serving "okonomi taters," a cross between tater tots and okonomiyaki (a Japanese savory pancake).

Given how popular the late-night ramen business is, I asked Itani why he doesn't open Yonsei more than one night a week. It turns out that the amount of pork or chicken bones that Itani has left over after a week's service at Hopscotch makes enough stock for about a hundred bowls of ramen  just enough to last three or four hours on a Friday night.

According to Itani, the fact that he's able to make the stock basically for free is the main thing that allows him to adhere to one of his personal ramen rules: "I really, really believe that ramen should be under $10 a bowl."

Tidbits

A Lithuanian restaurant and teahouse called Mama Papa Lithuania (1241 Park St.) is now open in Alameda. On the restaurant's website, owner Vaidas Sukys  whose mother is the chef  claims that Mama Papa Lithuania is the only Lithuanian restaurant on the West Coast. Intriguing menu items include potato dumplings stuffed with minced meat, two different kinds of borscht, and Lithuanian honey cake (medutis). ...

An Alcoholic Beverage Control license report reveals that a new restaurant, Centouno (101 Broadway), is coming to Jack London Square. The name on the liquor license application is Fabio Dalle Vacche, the general manager of Old Oakland's recently shuttered Borgo Italia. What the Fork has reached out to Dalle Vacche for more information, but given his involvement and the restaurant's name ("one hundred one" in Italian), Italian cuisine seems like a safe bet.

the salarymen would go out on Friday nights and drink their faces off. Afterwards inn Tokyo, it was a late night bowl of ramen, and in Taipei, it was the roadside stir-fry stands (conveniently located in bar areas) called “xiao ye” which were cheaper, more numerous, and at which the drinking usually continued.

It seemed they would all make it home somehow, but the street cleaners would need to be up early to, errrr, clean up the areas just outside the subway stops.....

I like Vietnamese Pho. Rice noodles in a aromatic beef broth, thin slices of raw eye round steeping in the broth. So thin they actually cook in the broth. Green Onions, thinly sliced white onion, a basil leaf, a bit of mint, stalk of lemon grass, bean sprouts, a few slices of Jalapeno pepper and a wedge of lime.

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